Adventures of Tain Bb, Hello? And Dumb Read online

Adventures Of Tain Bb, Hello? And Dumb.

  by Andrey Nuzhdin

  Copyright © 2012 Andrey Nuzhdin

  All rights reserved

  Cover illustration copyright © 2012 Lena Pokaleva

  Chapter One, in which We Meet Tain Bb, And From His Pillow The Head Feather Goes Missing

  ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,’ Tain Bb said sorrowfully and shook his head. What could one say, he was very upset. To begin with his bedroom looked ominous now in the middle of the night. The full moon shone on the window, throwing oblique shadows through the window-frame, it slowly slid from the floor on to the objects in the room, impassively rose up, then curved in and, shortly after, reached the bed. Tain Bb could almost physically feel its indifferent, sticky presence on his body. What a depressing picture. But, unfortunately, it was fully appropriate to his state of mind. Thoughtfully biting his upper lip, Tain Bb ran through recent events in his head.

  ‘Certain Rabbit’ was his full name, our hero. His friends thought it was too long, and, by general consent, they tended to get rid of the unnecessary letters. And that’s how the beautiful and full-bodied name ‘Certain Rabbit’ turned into the stunted ‘Tain Bb’.

  But truly Tain Bb didn’t really mind in this regard. And in general he reckoned if people made a path that everyone felt comfortable walking along - it was the right path.

  On the day he became 5 years, 5 months and 5 days old, his nan gave him a pillow. It was like any typical pillow, except for one detail: inside between many ordinary white feathers was one, bigger then the rest. It was half-white and half-ginger and it had quite important and useful characteristics and was called the Head Feather. Its presence in the pillow helped in sleep to clear the head from difficult and bad thoughts, and made waking up easy and pleasurable. If anybody happened to fall off their bike or to over-eat strawberry jam, sleeping on this pillow eased the bad consequences of this act, and that of course lifted the spirit. Tain Bb repeatedly came up against the magical characteristics of the Head Feather. But waking up in the middle of the night (that was very strange in itself), Tain Bb felt a sharp attack of unreasonable worry (that was doubly strange). To be fair, the day before he had pinched his finger in the door, trying to crack a very obstinate wall-nut against it. The finger was still a bit twitchy, and that was understandable, but the feeling of offence and irritation could not possibly have been provoked only by the door. He suffered from depression and lack of confidence such as had never happened before with him. At first he didn’t fall asleep straight away. He didn’t collapse, as usual, into a calm and relaxing weightlessness, but couldn’t get comfortable: the position of either his hand or leg brought discomfort. And, secondly, his dream was stupid and wrong. In it Tain Bb found himself in a vegetable garden, buried to his waist in soil! And nearby big red carrots were crowding. They exchanged remarks with each other, laughed at Tain, and some of them pointed fingers at him. This gave rise to such indignation in Tain, that he woke up with a fiercely distorted face and clenching his fists.

  As you can understand, waking up in this way is neither easy nor pleasurable.

  That’s why, falling into a state of profound thoughtfulness, Tain Bb absent-mindedly observed how in the creases of his pyjamas purple giraffes were chasing crimson elephants.

  ‘Most likely there’s something wrong with the pillow,’ he finally decided. ‘Something is broken inside it. And maybe…even…oh, NO!’ He was frightened by a simple thought. ‘What a nightmare! So that’s it. The Head Feather has disappeared, that’s what’s happened!’

  And at just that very same moment Tain said ‘yeah-yeah-yeah,’ which takes us back to the very beginning of the story.

  He jumped out of bed and started to run across the bleakly moon-lit room, stumbling along the way on various objects:

  1. On a basin of soapy water. Something, he forgot what, had been floating in it for 3 days.

  2. On the cat, Cactus, dozing in his place, who only slept when no one could see him.

  3. On a real cactus-plant in a big wooden pot.

  4. On umbrellas, opened and closed, scattered all over the flat.

  Those umbrellas are a different story. One day he decided to go to his friend’s birthday. Tain Bb couldn’t think of anything better to give him as a present than an ordinary umbrella, coloured by himself. A big black one with a wooden handle he had bought in the shop opposite and decorated with a bright colourful pattern in a peacock feather style. ‘Ah, what an umbrella! Stunning, absolutely stunning!’ yelled his friends. ‘We want one too! Can you do the same for us?’ Tain didn’t refuse. He enjoyed the job.

  And soon the orders begin to flood in and his flat got cluttered with umbrellas. He thought about opening a little workshop. He even had a name for it: ‘COLOURFUL SKYLINE UMBRELLAS’. Maybe one day the venture would bear fruit…why not?

  But now, confused and mixed up, Tain Bb moved chaotically around the room. He’d always done that, when he wanted to distract himself and clear his head.

  Suddenly something clicked in his consciousness and Tain Bb felt like the driver of a big train that was going along the rails past familiar stations. It went past station ‘Couch’, and station ‘Window’ approached then got left behind. Jumping on the intersection, he went past station ‘Door’ without stopping. Then the pattern was broken and the stations began to follow without any order. And somewhere in the middle, wedged unexpectedly in a small station as usual ‘Lay The Cat’.

  Having failed to even notice this inhabited place, the engine moved forward and broke sharply in front of a new object, seen for the first time. It was a wooden building with carved doors. And while the train-driver stared at it curiously, an invisible announcer silently declared: Station ‘Cupboard’.

  The program in Tain’s head changed, and, having returned from his travels, he found himself in front of a very familiar red wood cupboard. As usual, this cupboard always stood in the same place and had many boxes and shelves inside. While Tain tried to get his head around why he had stopped here, the cupboard buzzed in a friendly way with a warm baritone:

  ‘Open me, and in the third box down on the right you will find what you need.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Tain, talking to himself. ‘It’s a typical audio-hallucination. A talking cupboard! Ha-ha-ha!’ he added for confidence, but still switched on the light, and, after standing for a few moments, approached the cupboard uncertainly. Moved by some sort of sixth sense, he flung open the handle of the third box down on the right. After digging through a pile of old cards, he finally found what he needed.